Resurrection
by PoeticLife
Summary: The Powers That Be can't give a life for nothing. When Buffy was brought back in Bargaining, there were some different consequences... Spuffy AU written for Emolichic1
1. The Grave

**This story was written for Emolichic1. Sorry for the wait, I hope you enjoy this!**

* * *

 _"Osiris, keeper of the gate, master of all fate, hear us."_

It was dark. Too dark. She couldn't see or remember anything. She waited a moment, but her eyes didn't adjust. She thought someone might have spoken. The voice had sounded familiar, but she couldn't place it or remember what it had said.

 _"Before time, and after. Before knowing, and nothing."_

It was was obviously a woman's voice, and from the sound of the words, she was either spouting nonsense words in an unusually serious tone or performing a spell. She noticed how easily the thought of magic came to mind, and figured that she must have already known that magic was real. She wondered what her own name was.

 _"Accept our offering. Know our prayer."_

Her name didn't matter, and for the moment, she decided that the familiar voice praying to the god of the dead didn't matter either. What mattered was ascertaining where she was, and getting out. She was flat on her back, wearing a dress that was obviously meant for summer wear and too much makeup on her face. She thought she might have fallen from somewhere high.

 _"Osiris, here lies the warrior of the people. Let her cross over."_

She hoped she was wrong. If she could see anything but pitch black, she would probably see her breath rise in a mist in front of her, not breathing but hyperventilating. She couldn't have been. She tried to put her hands up in front of her and to her side, to see how much room she had. It was like something out of a horror movie.

She had been buried alive.

She was wasting oxygen, breathing this quickly. There couldn't be much air left, but the oxygen didn't seem to be reaching her brain. She had to get out. Now would've been a good time for the woman to speak again, but there was only silence.

She wished she knew her own name. It would make it easier to have something to call herself to snap herself out of her panic. Trying to calm down, she put her hands on the lid of the coffin, pressing her back into the cushions.

 _"Osiris, let her cross over!"_

She pushed, hard. An orange-red light suddenly glowed from nowhere, just in time to show her that the inside of her coffin looked deceptively comfortable and that her dress was black and covered quite a lot of her. The force she was pushing with broke the top of the coffin with a snapping noise, and the surreal lighting let her see all of the dirt tumbling in on her. She screamed.

The woman screamed at the same time. _"Osiris, release her!"_

She pushed her way out, clawing through all of the soil that gravity sent down at her. The lid was completely broken now, being pushed by both sides, and trusted that she knew which way was up as she closed her eyes and started digging a tunnel up.

It seemed like forever, clawing her way back up to the world, but after layers and layers of dirt, her bleeding fingers touched air. Hauling herself up by one arm, her face broke the surface, and she remembered what starlight was. She thought she might have been here a few million times before, but never from this perspective. Now using two hands, she pulled all of herself up and rolled over to lay face-up on the grass.

After she had gotten used to the cold wind and the whisper of trees, she opened her eyes. The stars were out, and there were trees and grey things on the edges of her vision. She turned her head and saw that the grey things were headstones. The nearest one marked the grave she had climbed out of.

Buffy Summers sounded right to her. She was Buffy Anne Summers. She thought a bit about what the stone meant that she saved the world.

She reached over, touched the stone, and it all came back to her with dizzying force. Little sister Dawnie, Wicca friend Willow, funny friend Xander, Watcher Giles, and life as someone born to protect the world. Buffy knew she should feel guilty about not caring about them, but she didn't. At least she remembered them.

She should be home. She would kill for a snack or something to drink. Buffy supposed that she had been dead, but the thought didn't trouble her as much as why she had been woken up. Someone had done a spell to bring her back, calling the god of the dead himself.

Buffy tried to remember. She had been falling, or something like falling... she had jumped. She had so that Dawn could live and the world wouldn't have been in a hell dimension. Looking around the graveyard, which didn't look particularly hell-like, she thought it must've accepted her blood. She tried to pretend that she didn't just contemplate hell dimensions with disappointment.

She rolled herself over again, using her own tombstone to help her stand up. She had to get home.


	2. Revello Drive

**I think I forgot to mention in the first chapter that this version of her resurrection has no demon bikers. The Buffybot is conveniently out of this chapter because I forgot about her, even though she'll be in the next chapter.**

 **Edit: Thank you, Angelalex242, for calling me on being an idiot. I needed that.**

Buffy was standing outside 1630 Revello Drive, wondering what to do. She wondered how long she'd been dead for, and how much of a shock it would give everyone. The flowerbeds looked nicer than she had left them, and the numbers of her address had obviously been polished a few times, which she had never done.

She realised that it was possible that her friends had taken Dawn out of the house and out of Sunnydale after she had died. It was equally possible that Willow or Xander had started living here. If someone else had moved in, she would have a bit of a job trying to explain what she was doing here covered in dirt.

She decided to end it all and knock.

Dawn glanced up from a game of checkers with Spike when someone knocked on the door. Making her move to capture one of his checkers, she stood up to cross the room.

Dawn opened the door. "Spike, the Buffybot's back," she called over her shoulder, frowning at her. "What happened to you?"

The Buffybot had a startled look on its face as it stared at her, completely covered in soil. It looked like she had fallen into an empty grave during patrols. Curious, Dawn went back into the living room, expecting the bot to follow.

"Come in," Dawn said, looking at her with concern and confusion when it just stood there in the doorway. It followed her in, not speaking a word, which was unusual for it.

Spike was sitting in the living room in front of a game of checkers, the same way she had left him. He looked up as it walked in, but avoided eye contact with the bot, instead looking anywhere else. "Why's it covered in dirt?"

"It?"

Dawn and Spike both froze. Spike's eyes traveled to her hand, which were stinging and bleeding. Dawn took a few steps towards her, hoping, not daring to believe just yet.

"Buffy?" She asked quietly.

Buffy nodded. "I... I think so. Dawnie, was I dead?"

Dawn hugged her fiercely, and she could feel her sister's cool skin, breathed the smell of her sweaty, matted hair. She fought a sudden urge to burst into tears of absolute joy. That was when something sharp pierced her neck and drew blood.

"Get back!" Spike yelled, pulling Dawn back and pushing Buffy against a wall. "What the bloody hell are you?"

"How should I know?" Buffy shouted back at him, and with a thrill of horror Dawn realised that she had fangs and a demon's face. "I woke up in a coffin and dug my way out! Now let me have something to eat!"

Behind him, Dawn flinched, shaking in fear and renewed grief, holding her own neck to keep from losing blood. Spike slammed her against the wall again, showing no mercy. "You aren't eating anyone here. Where have you been since you jumped into that portal?"

"I jumped, then I was underground! It's been months?" She asked, apparently side-tracked. "Wait, am I a vampire?"

"You just tried to bite your bloody sister and you're still in vamp-face, so I'd say yeah!" he said in a fiercely sarcastic tone. Buffy felt her own forehead and looked up at him in confusion, not knowing what to say.

"Hey, Dawnie, we're home," said someone at the door, and Dawn saw recognition in her yellow eyes.

Spike barely caught her in time as she lunged towards Willow, screaming, "You did it! What did you do to me? What did you do to me?" Willow stepped back into Xander, Anya, and Tara, startled but not nearly as surprised as Dawn had been.

"You brought her back?"

Everyone turned to her, guilty, except Buffy, who was staring at Willow like she wanted to torture and kill her, and Spike, who was preventing her from doing just that. All Willow could do was mutter, "Oh god, oh god, oh god, it worked!"

"What the bloody hell did you _do,_ Red?" Spike shouted in the near-silence, turning his head but keeping Buffy pinned against the wall.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," said Anya quietly.

Spike snorted. "I bloody hope not. How did this happen?"

"You all did a resurrection spell," Dawn hissed, and the quiet anger that had been building all summer suddenly exploded. She ripped her hand away from her neck, letting them see the blood. "You did a resurrection spell! You resurrected my sister and you didn't even tell me what you were planning! Now, I have to watch her die _again._ Are you all idiots? These spells never work! I'm fifteen and I know that! What's your excuse?"

There was a small silence, in which Tara stared at Willow accusingly and Willow looked ready to cry. Anya held the hand of a suddenly jokeless Xander.

"We don't have to stake her."

They stared at Willow. Xander was the one to say it. "Look, Wil, I love you and I'm not blaming you for what went wrong here, but she's a vampire. We kind of do."

"I think there's an Orb of Thesula in the Magic Box, right, Anya?" She glanced at Anya, who gave a small nod. "Right, so we can give her back her soul. Then she'd be Buffy again, but better on patrols and eating pig's blood instead of pancakes."

Something about that statement made Dawn want to cry, but she didn't. She stared at the hope in Willow's eyes until she believed it, and said, "She'll be so pissed at you if it has a clause like Angel's."

"I think I can modify it," Willow admitted. "I was still pretty new to the whole magic thing back then, and that didn't even enter my mind when I was working on Angel's soul."

Spike nodded, obviously still angry. "Do it, then. You've got two days, then I stake her myself."


	3. Breakfast

**Oh, god, this took so long. Let's see if you can guess which part I stopped midway through and came back to after a few months of not watching Buffy. I've recently become obsessed with Merlin, sorry about that.**

 **On the other hand, tell me what you think about the characters. What should I do with the relationship between Tara and Willow, or Anya and Xander? This is going to be pretty focused on Spike and Buffy, but honestly, Buffy is one of my least favourite characters on the show, and I love all the other characters, so I'm going to focus at least a bit on them as well.**

"Have you phoned Giles?"

Willow turned around to see Tara standing there. Her face was serious, and Willow actually flinched at the sight of her.

"Not yet," she replied, still looking horribly guilty. She leaned against the kitchen counter, decided it would be easier to focus on breakfast, and smiled brightly. "Do you think Dawnie would want eggs? Or bacon? Or toast, with that special jam she likes? Or maybe everything, you know, she's probably going to be hungr -"

"Stop," Tara said quietly. "I know you're nervous. We're doing the spell today. We're all scared about all the ways this could go wrong. But breakfast won't make her talk to you again."

Willow glanced at her with tear-filled eyes. "I can't - I can't stop thinking - if it goes wrong - if we have to -"

Her gaze was steady and her words were clear. "You knew that was a possibility from the start. Willow, if this soul spell doesn't work, then you know what happens. It's not going to work if you don't think you can cast it. You've done this once, and if Xander was telling the truth, you were seventeen and in a hospital bed. You've come so far since then. You can do this."

There was a long moment of silence as her words resonated around the kitchen.

"I can do it," Willow muttered to herself. "Strong like an amazon, right?"

"Strong like an amazon," Tara confirmed softly.

* * *

"You really loved me, didn't you?" she asked, and it killed him to see that perfect mouth twisted into such an awful grin. Even when she had hated him, Buffy hadn't looked at him like that. "You were willing to die."

"Not like it was anything personal, Slayer," Spike said roughly, wishing they had given the job of watching the vampire to someone else. He was the only one with the stomach for it, though, and they knew it.

Buffy - no, not Buffy, it could never be Buffy - laughed. "You sure, William? Because it sure felt that way when you promised you'd take care of my family after I died. Great job with that, by the way. They're all wrecks."

"Yeah, and whose fault is that?" he asked her. "I didn't ask Red to cast that bloody spell. Can't say I'm glad, either. Buffy'd hate you. She'll probably hate me, too, after seeing the state of you and how I let that happen."

"Like she'll forgive you," the thing in Buffy's body laughed. "She was manipulating you from the start. She needed someone who would do anything for her and you were there. You're twisted and torn up and putty in these hands." She tried to indicate her hands, which, considering that she was tied to a chair, went unsurprisingly badly.

"Maybe so," Spike told her, not sure what she would remember of this. "Unfortunately for you, I don't happen to care."

* * *

Dawn didn't know what to do. She didn't know how to react. Her sister was back, and had tried to eat her. She knew she should feel miserable, but all she felt was hollow, like someone had scooped out her insides and left them in Buffy's broken coffin.

She supposed the first step towards dealing with this situation would be to have breakfast, the flaw being that she would have to see Willow and Tara, neither of them she particularly wanted to see.

That wasn't true. She needed to talk to Tara, who would give her the facts. She didn't want Willow's pretty lies and excuses. Dawn loved Willow like a second older sister, but she had an annoying and sometimes dangerous tendency to give only the facts that she thought were relevant and to exclude anything she didn't think needed to be said. She was the one who promised things were going to be alright so many times that the words meant nothing anymore.

Tara, on the other hand, shared her doubts and fears (or at least some of them) with her, and when she said things were going to be alright, they really were going to be alright. Dawn had learned to trust that what she said was the truth.

Of course, that was before a certain group of her sister's friends decided to dabble in necromancy. Tara couldn't be trusted any more than Willow could be anymore, and the same went for Xander and Anya. At the point, the only people who hadn't made her go through hell were Giles and Spike.

She wondered if Giles knew. Dawn knew that Willow wouldn't have the guts to tell him what she had done and Tara didn't feel that she knew him well enough, and while Xander and Anya each could have phoned him, she had a feeling that they wouldn't.

Phoning Giles, in this case, fell to her. She had been wanting to speak to him anyways. The only way she would get to have a long talk with the man who was a better father than her own (but not her own - did keys to hell dimensions have fathers?) would be to chat as if nothing was wrong, then drop the bomb at the end of the conversation.

Spike was the person she most wanted to talk to, but as he was watching the thing that wasn't her sister and would probably be a drunken mess for at least a day afterwards, if not a week, he wasn't the one to see now. Dawn was on her own.

The only thing she wished she could do on her own was eat breakfast.

* * *

"Anya, no."

"Why not?" She asked, annoyingly perky in the face of disaster. "Simple, to-the-point, very direct. Giles doesn't like it if you dance around a thing to much."

Xander let out an exasperated half-sigh, half-scream and dropped his half-burnt toast back onto the plate. "You can't phone someone and say, _'hey, we just resurrected your daughter and accidentally turned her into a vampire'_! Humans don't do things like that!"

"Oh, so you're playing the human card, are you?" she demanded, perkiness turning quickly to tears and anger. She set her plate down loudly on the coffee table. " _'Oh, no, Anya, you can't understand this because you aren't human. You can't do this because you're a demon. You can't say this because you don't know anything about human life.'_ I was born human and I'll die human, as frustrating as that is, and if you can't accept that, I don't know if I can be with you!"

Xander found himself speechless, and after a moment of looking at each other with half-broken hearts, he said quietly, "All I said was that it would hurt Giles, and we shouldn't say it like that."

"No, you said that we shouldn't say it like that, and the only reasoning you gave was that humans don't do that." Her voice was quieter too, and a single hot tear rolled down her face. "You need to stop doing that. The next time, I'll pack up and go, and I mean that."

"Alright," Xander agreed, already ashamed of himself. "I'm sorry, Anya."

She nodded jerkily and left the room. He sank onto the couch, hands over his face.


End file.
